Breathing monitoring has many useful applications in today's world. For example, post-surgical patients can die from respiratory depression and airway obstruction, which are unfortunately common after surgery due the difficulty of correctly dosing sedatives and pain medications administered to a patient. Reliable respiration monitoring is critical to detection of these conditions
Breathing monitoring also has application in diagnosis and treatment for obstructive sleep apnea, in which a person experiences periods of low breathing rate or long pauses in breathing while sleeping. Furthermore, breathing monitoring may have application in detecting sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which is one of the largest causes of death in infants. Parents with a child with one or more risk factors for SIDS may wish to use a baby breathing monitor to alert them in case their child's breathing becomes depressed or stops. Thus, it may be desirable to monitor the breathing of a patient.